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mallorys_cameraDreamed I was checking on the cats in an apartment I had moved out of. And there were a lot of cats! Like hundreds of them! And I knew them all by name or at least by disposition, and I was frantically setting up feeding stations. Was Ben with me? I think he may have been; he was giving me instructions, which for the most part, I was ignoring.
I’d had to use the most curious key to get into this apartment. It was shaped like a series of large, standing ovals and I didn’t see how you could possibly fit it through a keyhole. Except then I realized, you had to do something to the keyhole. You had to make the keyhole change—which somehow, I had managed to do. (Go, dream me!)
I was looking for Rutger among the cats, but I wasn’t seeing him. “Right,” said Ben. “He’s in the apartment upstairs.”
So there were two apartments filled with cats! If I looked up at the ceiling, I could see the apartment upstairs, and I wanted to get there, find Rutger, feed Rutger, maybe even smuggle Rutger out—if that was possible.
Then I remembered, Wait! I have to put down litter boxes for the cats downstairs!
So, I decided to give Ben some money and send him to the store to buy litter boxes.
Even as I was giving him the money, I thought, This is a mistake! He will steal the money and then he will return with some absolutely plausible story about how the money disappeared, how it wasn’t his fault that the money disappeared.
I didn’t know what to do. Because I couldn’t leave the apartments with all the cats so long as there was a chance Rutger was still trapped there.
###
I decided to experiment!
I got very, very stoned yesterday morning.
I don’t actually like getting stoned all that much. Marijuana is not my head trip of choice by a long shot.
But I’ve sworn off drinking again: It would be just too easy to spend the remainder of my life in a drunken stupor. And even though there’s not much of an edge to my life right now—in fact, you could say that’s the problem with my life: no edge!—I keep thinking, You need to take the edge off!
Anyway, the experiment was not a success.
Didn’t really hamper my productivity very much. I did everything I needed to do.
But I did it all with this weird feeling of self-consciousness: This is me making the decision to do everything I need to do! And now, I am propelling my fat ass out of this comfortable desk chair—
Kind of like some insane inner Edward R. Murrow soliloquy.
And also, it made me vaguely queasy, which naturally I obsessed over since isn’t queasiness a symptom in 0.5% of all covid-19 infections?????
I had covid-19!
And it was only a matter of time before I developed all those other unpleasant symptoms!
The Small Still Voice of Reason counseled, You don’t have covid-19.
And the two voices began arguing inside my head.
Which was quite unpleasant.
###
I continued reading The Lola Quartet.
It’s not a very good book.
And that made me happy because it helped me realize that even if your third novel is not very good, your fourth novel may be magnificent.
I’d had to use the most curious key to get into this apartment. It was shaped like a series of large, standing ovals and I didn’t see how you could possibly fit it through a keyhole. Except then I realized, you had to do something to the keyhole. You had to make the keyhole change—which somehow, I had managed to do. (Go, dream me!)
I was looking for Rutger among the cats, but I wasn’t seeing him. “Right,” said Ben. “He’s in the apartment upstairs.”
So there were two apartments filled with cats! If I looked up at the ceiling, I could see the apartment upstairs, and I wanted to get there, find Rutger, feed Rutger, maybe even smuggle Rutger out—if that was possible.
Then I remembered, Wait! I have to put down litter boxes for the cats downstairs!
So, I decided to give Ben some money and send him to the store to buy litter boxes.
Even as I was giving him the money, I thought, This is a mistake! He will steal the money and then he will return with some absolutely plausible story about how the money disappeared, how it wasn’t his fault that the money disappeared.
I didn’t know what to do. Because I couldn’t leave the apartments with all the cats so long as there was a chance Rutger was still trapped there.
###
I decided to experiment!
I got very, very stoned yesterday morning.
I don’t actually like getting stoned all that much. Marijuana is not my head trip of choice by a long shot.
But I’ve sworn off drinking again: It would be just too easy to spend the remainder of my life in a drunken stupor. And even though there’s not much of an edge to my life right now—in fact, you could say that’s the problem with my life: no edge!—I keep thinking, You need to take the edge off!
Anyway, the experiment was not a success.
Didn’t really hamper my productivity very much. I did everything I needed to do.
But I did it all with this weird feeling of self-consciousness: This is me making the decision to do everything I need to do! And now, I am propelling my fat ass out of this comfortable desk chair—
Kind of like some insane inner Edward R. Murrow soliloquy.
And also, it made me vaguely queasy, which naturally I obsessed over since isn’t queasiness a symptom in 0.5% of all covid-19 infections?????
I had covid-19!
And it was only a matter of time before I developed all those other unpleasant symptoms!
The Small Still Voice of Reason counseled, You don’t have covid-19.
And the two voices began arguing inside my head.
Which was quite unpleasant.
###
I continued reading The Lola Quartet.
It’s not a very good book.
And that made me happy because it helped me realize that even if your third novel is not very good, your fourth novel may be magnificent.
